A New Internet Extension Can Compete with .COM

The king of extensions is .com, and dethroning it won't be easy. But one day soon .com will have a genuine competitor, and there are two things we already know about the competition. First, the newcomer will have been sold as an underdog. Second, it will have attracted businesses that are passionate about being content-quality leaders. more

ICANN Board Approves ‘Thick’ Whois Requirement for .COM and .NET

The ICANN Board has approved the community recommendation that "the provision of Thick Whois services should become a requirement for all gTLD registries, both existing and future." We have long supported the migration from 'thin' to 'thick' Whois, which will improve both quality and ease of access to Whois data, thereby further facilitating intellectual property enforcement online. The ICANN community has debated the merits of migration from 'thin' to 'thick' Whois for years, as part of the larger Whois Review process. more

China’s MIIT Clarifies New Domain Name Regulations, Allays Concerns Over Government Interference

A recent clarification to draft domain name regulations by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) indicates greater engagement and openness with the domain name market, not a contraction as some had feared. Following the MIIT's announcement on March 25th 2016, the same Ministry issued a clarification on Wednesday March 30th stating that its new draft regulations will not affect any foreign enterprises or foreign websites from resolving in China. more

Interesting Facts About Domain Names

During a database testing, Dennis Forbes makes use of the .com zone file as data sample but he also stumbles upon some unexpected domain name discoveries which he has reported on his site. Dennis Forbes explains: "I recently had a need for a mid-sized amount of real-world data, which I required for testing purposes on low-end hardware (testing and demonstrating some of the new functionality of SQL Server 2005). I wanted something that wasn't confidential, which excluded the easy choice of using business data, and I refrain from using artificial data..." more

Data Reveals Domain Name Registrations Have Hit All-Time Highs

In a report released today, VeriSign has stated that more than 4.7 million new domain names registered during the first quarter of 2004 -- highest ever recorded in a three-month period. "The profile reveals that more than 63 million domain names have now been registered, approximately one for every 100 people living in the world today. This number is greater than at any time in the Internet's history, surpassing even the heights that were seen during the Internet "bubble." Moreover, data reveal that the current base of domain names is being utilized more actively than ever before, as measured by renewal rates, look-up rates, and the percentage of domain names tied to live sites." more

Why You Must Learn to Love DNSSEC

It's been nearly two months since the high profile BGP hijack attack against MyEtherwallet, where crypto thieves used BGP leaks to hijack MEW's name servers, which were on Amazon's Route53, and inserted their own fake name servers which directed victims to their own fake wallet site, thereby draining some people's wallets. It generated a lot of discussion at the time... What isn't fully appreciated is that attack has, in fact, changed the game somewhat... more

Report on Survey of Domain Registration Services

Numerous competitive registrars offer diverse domain registration services to individuals, companies, and organizations. This study attempts to index and analyze their service offerings, facilitating analysis by other researchers and in preparation for additional analysis by the author.  more

Internet Governance in Transition: The ITU as a Battleground for Rival Visions

During the past few years, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has been a battleground where governments promote rival visions of how the Internet should be governed. Although there has been a recent cease-fire as Internet governance debates have focused more on the role of ICANN, those skirmishes may soon restart at the ITU... Co-authored by Ambassador Gross (chair of Wiley Rein's International & Internet Practice), Carl R. Frank, Umair Javed, and Sara M. Baxenberg (members of Wiley Rein's Telecom, Media & Technology Practice). more

18 Million of the 22 Million Net Neutrality Comments Received by FCC in 2017 Were Fake

A multi-year investigation into 2017 net neutrality rulemaking finds 18 million fake comments were filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and half a million fake letters were sent to Congress. more

Branding with New gTLDs: The Next Marketing Frontier

New gTLDs can be an efficient way to immediately propel a registrant's online relevance and profitability. Registrants are the companies, organizations and individuals who seek to better utilize the Internet to reach their goals. Marketing Professionals acting on their behalf should understand that protection mechanisms for new gTLDs have been created by ICANN. New gTLDs are powerful and inexpensive marketing tools that have improved measures of online stability and security... more

COICA and Secure DNS

As a strong proponent of the private right of action for all Internet endpoints and users, I've long been aware of the costs in complexity and chaos of any kind of "blocking" that deliberately keeps something from working. I saw this as a founder at MAPS back in 1997 or so when we created the first RBL to put some distributed controls in place to prevent the transmission of unwanted e-mail from low reputation Internet addresses. What we saw was that in addition to the expected costs (to spammers) and benefits (to victims) of this new technology there were unintended costs to system and network operators whose diagnostic and repair work for problems related to e-mail delivery was made more complex because of the new consideration for every trouble ticket: "was this e-mail message blocked or on purpose?" more

Petition Against Site Finder

We Internet users, who either own domain names or have an interest in the domain name system, wish to object to the VeriSign's Site Finder system. We believe that the system: 1) Breaks technical standards, by rewriting the expected error codes to instead point to VeriSign's pay-per-click web directory, and threatens the security and stability of the Internet; 2) Breaks technical standards affecting email services, and other Internet systems... more

A Trick to Register Good Generic Domain Names

A good domain name can be difficult to find... in particular when the domain name extension is highly demanded. It is what is happening with the .CLUB new gTLD. Should your Registrar tell you that the desired domain name is not available, it is not necessarily true. Anybody involved in launching a website has to go through a search for a domain name, and most of the time, it begins with the following question: "is the .com available?". Most of the time the answer is: "no it is not".  more

Why FOISA Should Never Become Law

In a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal, I noticed an underreported story about an embarrassing glitch that occurred involving the "washpost.com" domain name, which is used by the Washington Post Newspaper Company. Apparently, recently, the domain name stopped working -- no domain name services. This disrupted the flow and access of e-mail at the Washington Post as well as the operations of the washpost.com website.  more

Is China Preparing to Go its Own Way with its Own Internet Root?

Interesting things happening in China. An article in the English edition of the People's Daily on line is headlined, Decimal network security address begins operation: "China's decimal network security address was officially launched. China has made a fundamental breakthrough in its Internet development; and actual use has been successful. The birth of decimal network technology makes China the only country able to unify domain names, IP addresses and MAC addresses into the text of a metric system..." Someone asked whether this was a rumored IPv9? It appears IPv9 is a project name, not a new protocol. It lumps together several activities, including at least... more